


Turn Aside Before the Cock Crows

by Vyc



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: AU, Canon Rewrite, Gen, Minor Character Death, References to Dubcon, References to Genocide, Repentance, Speculation, Violence, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 02:32:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1727873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyc/pseuds/Vyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai Winn had three chances to turn away from the path of the Pah-Wraiths. In DS9's canon, she chose the third. This is what might have happened if she had chosen differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn Aside Before the Cock Crows

**Author's Note:**

> One of my least favourite things about Season 7 is what the writers did to Kai Winn. Her dubcon relationship with Dukat sat extremely poorly with me for many, many reasons. Beyond the obvious, it read to me like punishing a female character with sex for seeking power, and that's just fantastically gross. I may not be a fan of Winn as a person, but as a character, I thought she was terrific until everything went to hell (pun not intended).
> 
> That said, this fic also came from the way it seemed to me that Winn had three chances to get off her path to the Pah-Wraiths. In the show, it was when she told Sisko to destroy the book that she finally did, but it was too late for her. I picked out a couple of other moments where things might have gone differently and had fun exploring what could have happened. And I enjoyed myself immensely.

> _Jesus said to him, "Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times."_
> 
> _Matthew 26:34_

(1)

She's come to welcome the silence, at long last.

At first, when she had fled—come, when she had come to the Dakeen Monastery, silence had been something to fear. She had strained her ears in a perverse kind of hope that she would once more be cursed by the voices of the Pah-Wraiths. At least then there would be a reason for her terror.

As the days passed, she heard no more from the Pah-Wraiths than she did from the Prophets. Her fear eased into frustration, and she began to regard the silence with anger. She had been the Kai. There had always been people around her, consulting with her, calling her "Eminence," carrying out her wishes for the good of Bajor. Here, she is one of many, offering prayers and not leading them, even helping to tend the vegetable gardens that make the monastery self-sufficient. No one comes to see her. Bajor seems to flow along without her.

She hates the silence, but she endures it as she endured the Occupation. One season turns into another and another, and one winter day, as she warms her hands around a cup of tea, she realises that the silence has given her peace. It's a feeling alien to her, and she's still not certain she's identified it properly, but—perhaps this is what serenity is. 

She does not hear the Prophets, but nor does she hear the Pah-Wraiths. She has no demands on her time. All she has is to sit with her tea, watching the snowflakes come to rest one by one in the courtyard.

She'll have to remember this feeling. When she becomes Kai again, it will be the perfect way to show her people that she has emerged from her spiritual retreat refreshed and ready to guide them once more.

(2)

" _You must be stopped_."

It's a rasp and nothing more. Solbor, her dry and thin aide, is so overwrought with passion that he's beyond shouting. He turns, dignity forgotten, care forgotten, all forgotten save his intent to denounce her plans to Bajor and the Prophets, and she's about to be ruined beyond repair.

"Solbor, I beg you—" He doesn't stop even as she seizes his shoulder. " _No_!"

And then she's stabbed him. The man who had served at her side, who had been a part of her life every day for years upon years, dies with a cry that shakes into a stutter. She will never be able to purge the sound from her mind, nor will she forget the warm, wet wash of his blood over her hand.

She has time only to watch him go still (curled up like a child) before she feels fingers wrap around her upper arms.

"It'll be all right," Dukat, oh Prophets, _Gul Dukat_ murmurs to her with filthy tenderness even as she wheels and chokes out, "Don't touch me!"

She backs up, the knife with Solbor's blood her sole protection from the man responsible for the murder of millions of her people. The sight of the earring on his ear sickens her, but not nearly so much as the knowledge that _this_ is what had been sharing her bed for weeks.

"My life is over," she says. Her voice strengthens with hatred. "The Pah-Wraiths sent you to destroy me!"

He dares to contradict her. "On the contrary—they sent me to _save_ you."

Her throat is so tight, she can barely bite out, "Lies! Nothing but Cardassian lies." Revulsion rises in her. "To think I let you touch me."

He looks at her, his supposed regret over losing her so sincere-seeming that it sickens her all over again.

Then, gently, he says, "Adami," and stretches out his hand.

He thinks her a fool.

The realisation is a sharp gust of wind, blowing the panic from her mind. He thinks he needs only to invoke the intimacy they had shared to regain her compliance, as if that would be enough for her to forget that he had been the Cardassian Prefect of Bajor. He may have once ruled the Bajoran people, but he has no understanding of them, or of her.

She lets herself appear to waver and takes just one step forward, to see what he will do.

He smiles. His lips are soft and there's warmth in the creases at his eyes, but now she can sense the triumph at his Cardassian core.

She steps again and again, letting her hand holding the knife falter. He spreads his arms for her.

She takes the last two steps at a run and stabs him, too.

This time, there's no horror at the knowledge that she's ended a life. In fact, at his look of shock, she laughs.

"You shouldn't have called me that," she tells him as he crumples in on himself. "The proper term of address for a Kai is—"

He snarls and lunges for her, reduced by his wound to the level of an animal. She stumbles back from him unharmed; he's become clumsy in his last moments.

"Animals" —that's what the Cardassians had once called the Bajorans as they had inflicted upon them abuses they would have reserved for no other creature under any sun. The irony of Dukat's coming death is sweeter than food or drink could hope to be.

He's on his knees before her now and she laughs again.

"The Pah-Wraiths—will ensure you burn . . . for _eternity_ ," he growls.

"I don't think so," she says, watching him closely, for even a dying animal can be dangerous. "I've just killed a great enemy of the Prophets. I'm certain that will be more than enough to earn their forgiveness."

"You foolish . . . w—" He chokes on the word. And then he dies.

She looks down upon him, the knife firm in her hand. He died reaching for her, one arm stretching out to drag her with him to the domain of the Pah-Wraiths. Though she might be splashed with his blood, in the end, she has escaped his grasp.

But it isn't only his blood on her hands. She turns back to where Solbor still lies. The lack of dignity of his pose is painful to look upon. Her triumph fades with her smile.

Poor Solbor. He had only been trying to be loyal to her in the best way he knew, and this is how the Prophets have rewarded him.

She spares a moment to regret his loss before she straightens. Poor Solbor. When he had learned the truth of "Anjohl's" deception, he had rushed in to confront the evil and drive it out, to save his Kai. Before she could stop him, Dukat had taken up the knife from her tray and had stabbed Solbor, murdering a righteous man and smiling as he did it. Enraged, to avenge her good and loyal servant—to avenge all of Bajor—she had seized the knife and killed Gul Dukat, the man responsible for the suffering and deaths of millions of Bajorans. She, Kai Winn, had brought him to justice when no one else had.

She smiles again. Solbor will be a saint, renowned as the last victim of Gul Dukat and the one who had died to save the Kai from his evilness. And she . . . will be the most beloved of the Kai, celebrated throughout all history.

She nearly laughs again, but quells it. She steps around the blood that stains the floor of her office until she's standing above Dukat's corpse once more.

She lets the knife fall and begins to scream.


End file.
